


to be by your side

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: #CousyComfort, Angst, Coulson being supportive and telling Daisy how amazing she is, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Future Fic, Love Confessions, POV Phil Coulson, references to season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 13:11:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14694900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Two times Coulson went with Daisy to visit her mother's grave.Written for the #CousyComfort challenge at johnsonandcoulson.com





	to be by your side

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hamsterfactor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamsterfactor/gifts), [Skyepilot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/gifts), [RowboatCop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowboatCop/gifts), [AvatarQuake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvatarQuake/gifts), [Persiflage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persiflage/gifts), [BrilliantlyHorrid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrilliantlyHorrid/gifts), [tqpannie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tqpannie/gifts).



Coulson tugs at the strap of the slings, trying to loosen it a bit, discreetly, so that Skye wouldn’t see. The fabric irritates the skin of his neck, but deep down he’s almost grateful for the sensorial distraction, something to keep his mind of the constant pain in his arm - well, his stump.

He thinks, vaguely, that the gravestone looks nice, the place private, maybe the dead can find a measure of peace here. It’s a beautiful, sunny day, and maybe that makes things worse.

“I should have brought flowers, shouldn’t I?” Skye says. He watches her bite the inside of her cheek, like she feels guilty for the whole thing. He knows Skye: of course she feels guilty and like it’s her fault that her mother became a monster who tried to kill her.

Coulson touches the small of her back.

He finds it difficult - impossible, really - to touch and be touched by people these days, it’s too soon yet. But to comfort Skye he’ll make the effort. The strap of the sling digs a bit deeper into his neck, but he keeps the hand on Skye’s back.

“Thank you,” she says, gesturing at the grave. “For doing this.”

“It’s the least I could do,” Coulson replies, and by him he also means SHIELD, they were unable to protect people like Jiaying from Hydra, and this was the result. The dead, the forgotten, a broken family. Skye’s life would have been so much different if SHIELD had been able to stop Hydra from the beginning. She wouldn’t have had to wander from foster home to foster home, thinking nobody wanted her. She wouldn’t have had to live on the streets, and waste her life searching for a family she was eventually going to lose anyway. This, all this, even this grave, this is on SHIELD’s conscience. 

“I know how much this must have cost to arrange,” Skye says, looking ahead and not at Coulson. He guesses she doesn’t want him to see her eyes dampened. “There must be at least four different government agencies that would kill to have my mom’s body to study in their labs.”

This is one of the few times Coulson wishes Skye wasn’t so cleared eyes, so damn smart, much smarter than he is. Not just other government agencies - even people inside SHIELD, inside their own team, wanted tests to be run on the body. But if Coulson has learned something through all this - at great personal cost - is that Inhumans must be protected, even in death.

“Yes,” he confirms for her. “That’s all the more reason for a proper burial.”

Skye turns her head and nods, understanding what he means. Coulson hopes it sounds a bit like something she would say.

She throws a warm look at the arm still around her back, holding her for comfort.

“And thank you for coming with me,” she tells him. “For making sure I didn’t have to do this alone.”

“Of course,” he says.

He had to offer. Knowing Skye would never ask something like this herself.

“I know it’s not easy for you,” she says, glancing over his stump.

Coulson looks away. It’s the first time since it happened - since the trip back from The Illiad, of which Coulson doesn’t have much of a memory, except for Skye saying _I’m so sorry_ over an over, her face close to his chest - that they have talked about the issue.

“It’s fine,” he says. It’s not entirely true. But he knows his resentment - how much it fucking hurts, how incomplete and monstrous his body feels right now - is unjustly placed right now. “I don’t blame her,” he adds, looking at the gravestone.

“And me?” Skye asks, voice breaking slightly. “Do you blame me? For letting her rope me in? For being stupid?”

Coulson lifts his hand to her shoulder, squeezing.

“You weren’t stupid,” he tells her. “You were trying to help the people you felt needed help. You might have made a mistake but… you did what was right. I don’t think you could have acted differently. And I think you know that.”

Skye doesn’t say anything, but she seems to accept his words. Or at least she doesn’t fight them.

He watches her look at the grave. One last, long look. They both know she can never go back to visit, the necessity of keeping this place a secret. In a way this is the last time Skye will be with her mother.

Another last goodbye.

She doesn’t deserve all this.

Coulson welcomes the distraction of his pained body, the burning at the end of his stump, the sling irritating his skin, he can think about those, and not about Skye’s sad face, and how he and the world have failed her once more.

 

 

**&**

He’s not sure where she got the flowers from, when in the hell she had time for it, but the gesture, the carefulness with which she places the bouquet next to the gravestone, tell Coulson something about what she must be going through.

This all feels surreal, like he’s watching a movie, and not just because of the deja-vu. His body feels strange, alive when he didn’t expect to be, healthy after he had given up hope. Not Daisy, though. She never gave up.

He watches her hesitate, re-arranging the flowers a couple of times until she’s satisfied with the placement. Until she feels it’s worthy of Jiaying.

Coulson can tell she is trying to make it up to her.

All of it.

He knows he probably doesn’t deserve to be here with Daisy - that his presence is some further transgression against the woman’s memory. But being near Daisy matter more, he’s glad to be alive, if for nothing else so that he can be by her side today. So she doesn’t have to do this alone - like she’s had to do so many things.

“I’m so sorry that you had to go through this,” Coulson says. Standing here, with Daisy, in front of this grave, he feels unworthy of this new chance. “Everything that’s happened, going to the future, being called the Destroyer of World, what Fitz did to you… and now this. What you had to do to-”

Daisy shakes her head, silencing him for a moment.

“I can’t even begin to imagine what it felt like,” he adds, looking at the fresh dirt on the ground. “This is your mom and you…”

He trails off, not finding the exact words, the words that won’t feel like he’s trespassing the place again.

“I think she would have gotten it,” Daisy says.

“What do you mean?”

She doesn’t turn to face him as she speaks, her eyes still fixed on the humble gravestone.

“I never got to know the real Jiaying, my real mom, but… for what I know of how she used to be, I think she’d understand this, that I’m my father’s daughter, and I’d do anything to save the person I love.”

After a moment Daisy turns to him, shyly, but like she wants to underscore what she means in case Coulson had missed the point. It’s both surprising and touching to hear this, for him.

Daisy presses her hand against his chest, and then her mouth against his mouth.

He returns the kiss. Not too hard, but obvious enough that they both know it’s the first kiss of many.

When they part Daisy is smiling - it’s not that he hasn’t seen her smile in a while, he hasn’t, but Coulson thinks he has never seen this particular smile on her. Then her face gets scrunched and her eyes narrow with guilt.

“It’s probably very inappropriate that I just did _that_ , here, in front of…”

She closes her eyes, absolutely mortified.

Coulson smiles kindly. He lifts her hand to her face, feeling his newly-healthy body, his new second chance, tingle with the contact. Daisy opens her eyes, leaning her body towards his fingers. He touches her cheek, charmed by her notion that she should feel ashamed for kissing him in this setting. He wonders how he didn’t see it before, how right this feels.

“Daisy…” he whispers as he runs his thumb across her jaw. It sounds like a song he never wants to stop singing.

Being loved by Daisy would be like a dream come true for anyone; loving her back feels surprisingly easy at the moment. He could have never imagined that.

“I didn’t know Jiaying,” Coulson tells Daisy. “But if she was her daughter’s mother then I think she would have understood this… she would have understood you.”

Daisy’s face transforms upon his words. It softens and brightens and did he really never notice how beautiful she was. Coulson thinks about how much he has to make up for. Make it up to her.

Daisy presses her face to his shoulder, hugging him. For the first time Coulson notices it’s a cool, breezy day. She turns her face and looks at her mother’s gravestone once more. She’s going to have to say another goodbye to her, but she’s going to take her time. Coulson is happy to wait for her, by her side.


End file.
